In implant therapy, artificial tooth roots made of titanium for replacing natural tooth root, are embedded in the alveolar bone so as to be located at the positions where the teeth used to be present, for example, being extracted. Then, after the artificial tooth roots have been cured for several months until being fitted to the bone, artificial teeth are made and attached to the artificial tooth root.
The alveolar bone after the loss of teeth is relatively liable to dissolve and thus the gum is liable to degenerate. Accordingly, the interdental papilla between the artificial tooth roots tends to lower. Further, the interdental papilla between the teeth affected by periodontal disease, for example, may disappear.
The lowering of the interdental papilla may form an excessive interdental space to raise the following problems of:
(1) Aesthetically bad-looking appearance;
(2) Phonetically tending to cause unclear lisp sound; and
(3) Hygienically unfavorable tendency of causing food debris to stick between teeth.
Possible measures that can be considered for these problems in the conventional art, may have been to make the artificial teeth in a slightly larger size to narrow the space between the artificial teeth, or to rebuild the interdental papilla between the artificial teeth, using the guided bone regeneration technique or transplantation technique.